Im-Politic: A Good News/Bad News Labor Day Poll for U.S. Labor Unions

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Economic Policy Institute, Gallup, government workers unions, Im-Politic, Labor Day, labor unions, public employee unions, unions, workers

As a firm believer that healthy democracies and vibrant economies need strong, independent labor unions, I’m happy to celebrate Labor Day each year, and pleased that Americans have been doing so now for 125 years. (Whether particular unions today are playing constructive roles is another matter entirely.)

And that’s why I’m also concerned that a recent Gallup poll on Americans’ views of unions contains as much troubling as encouraging news for organized labor.

Gallup’s summary emphasizes the positive, highlighting its finding that union approval is at a near-50 year high (64 percent, specifically). Moreover, that level is up sharply since the 48 percent all-time low recorded by Gallup in 2009. (Its figures go back to 1936, as shown below.)

At least as good, as I see it: On a relative basis, Gallup found that pro-union views lately have grown fastest among most strongly among self-described Republicans – a group that’s never been known for union support. Yet whereas unions’ approval rate grew by 33.33 percent overall from 2009 to 2019, among Republicans, it improved by 55.17 percent (from 29 percent to 45 percent).

This trend surely reflects the shift in the GOP’s base toward Trump-style working class-oriented populism, and away from the rigid claims still made by too many of the party’s representatives in Congress and various types of Washington, D.C.-based hangers on that simply pursuing business’ favored small government/low tax agenda will automatically bring the greatest benefits to the rest of the economy – and will be appreciated by voters.

Political independents’ union backing improved more than the national average, too, during this period – from 44 percent to 61 percent – but the 38 percent shift of has been less dramatic than that for Republicans. Since Democrats have always been most sympathetic to unions, their support levels remain the highest in absolute terms (66 percent), but the post-2009 improvement has been the smallest (24.24 percent).

The problems lurking for unions in these poll results? Mainly, that public approval of unions seems to have little at best to do with unions’ actual membership rolls. As the Gallup results make clear, although union support nowadays is indeed at relatively high levels, they’ve always been on the high side (at least since 1936). Indeed, support levels generally have exceeded 60 percent, even recently.

Yet during this time, union membership in America has nosedived. According to the Economic Policy Institute – a progressive think tank that supports unions and receives funds from organized labor – unions represented about 22 or 23 percent of U.S. workers in the mid-1930s. (See the graphic below.) As of last year, that figure stood at just 10.5 percent. And if not for government workers’ unions, whose membership accounts for nearly 34 percent of public sector employees, the share would be much lower. (See this report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for these data.)

Another big potential problem: During the last U.S. recession (which lasted from late-2007 to mid-2009), Gallup has found that public support for unions fell much farther and faster than during previous downturns. Optimists could note that the last recession was unusually deep, and that union approval ratings have rebounded strongly since. But during the Great Depression of the 1930s, which was much worse, union approval according to Gallup was much higher, and the Economic Policy Institute numbers show that union membership actually rose.

It’s also worth mentioning that this Gallup survey overlooked one big issue: Americans’ views of those government workers’ unions. That’s especially important because those public sector workers became a majority of U.S. union members in 2009, and remain so today. I’m not saying that this development has been either good or bad. But it does represent an historic milestone showing that the makeup of organized labor has changed markedly in recent decades. Does most of the public recognize this situation? Much of it? Do Americans regard government unions the same way they view private sector unions? Those are subjects Gallup and other pollsters need to explore. And there’s no reason to wait for next Labor Day. (Here’s a report on a poll dealing with some of these issues, but it’s eight years old.) 

 

Im-Politic: Why the Crucial Abortion Debates are (Long) Over

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abortion, abortion rights, Constitution, Gallup, heartbeat bills, Im-Politic, Kaiser Family Foundation, National Opinion Research Center, Pew Research Center, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, Quinnipiac College poll, Robert G. McCloskey, Roe vs. Wade, Supreme Court

If only most of the major challenges facing Americans were as easy to meet as arriving at a satisfactory compromise over abortion. In fact, in the key respects, the challenge has already been met, as a general consensus is staring the nation in its collective face, has been in place literally for decades, and looks guaranteed to remain solidly in place for the foreseeable future.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it, given the political and policy brawl that has erupted in recent weeks over a handful of states’ approval of laws dramatically reducing the circumstances in which abortion will remain legal?  But this contention is backed up strongly by the national legal regime regulating abortion right now, by all the polling, and by everything known about how the Supreme Court – which it’s thought on both sides of the issue could well transform the status quo it’s created since its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision – historically has handled such explosive questions. Moreover, abortion is one of those matters in which the politics, the law, and the history powerfully reinforce each other.

Let’s start with the law. The major Supreme Court decisions are of course the Roe case – which established a Constitutional right to abortion but also authorized states to infringe on it in various ways during a pregnancy’s second and third trimesters – but also a ruling in the 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey case. In it, a 5-4 majority of the Court created a standard to govern such state restrictions on abortion, holding that such measures could not impose an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions that “created a substantial obstacle” to undergoing the procedure “before the fetus attains viability.”

Revealingly, that guideline nicely describes the current U.S. consensus on abortion rights: Women deserve a fundamental right to abortion, but (like most other rights), it’s not absolute. More specifically, the most widely agreed on exceptions involve what are clearly exceptional (and exceptionally tragic) – mainly rape, incest, serious threats to the pregnant woman’s health, and a high likelihood that the new baby would suffer from serious defects. (See this recent Gallup summary for some representative data.)

Still more revealingly: These public attitudes have been remarkably stable over time. At least three separate polls – shown in the aforementioned Gallup summary, by Pew, and by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) – make this point emphatically.

And at least as important – NORC’s findings show that a sizable gap has existed between public support for the “tragic” exceptions to the right to abortion on the one hand (which have demonstrated at least 70 percent backing for the four decades examined), and other proposed exceptions (whose support generally has remained between 30 percent and 50 percent).

In turn, these legal and political considerations both create towering obstacles even to a Court now featuring a conservative majority overturning either the Roe or the Casey regimes. And least plausible of all is the wish-dream of abortion rights opponents and the nightmare of abortion rights supporters – that the Court bases such a reversal on cases brought deliberately in order to uphold the highly restrictive new state laws. For outlawing abortion even in the aftermath of rape and incest, for example, would seem the epitome of creating a Casey-violating undue burden on the fundamental right to abortion. The various “heartbeat” bills for their part can’t be squared with the Court’s determination in Roe and other decisions since that a fetus isn’t viable until long after the six weeks at which this function can first be detected.

Indeed, such laws repeatedly have been struck down in various courts, and the Supreme Court has refused to consider the two that reached it on appeal. And don’t think it’s a coincidence that the high court’s recent record tracks well with public opinion (including on the heartbeat bills, according to Kaiser Family Foundation and Quinnipiac University survey results presented in this sweeping summary of decades of abortion poll findings).

But couldn’t the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority decide the time is ripe to get rid of Roe and follow-on decisions? Not if it bears any resemblance to its predecessors since the New Deal era. For one of the seminal findings about the Court came back in 1960, in Harvard political scientist Robert G. McCloskey’s classic study, The American Supreme Court. As McCloskey argued compellingly, the Court is most successful when it pays attention to public opinion, and runs into its greatest troubles when it gets too far ahead of or too far behind these attitudes. If you’re skeptical, just think of the tumult that followed the pre-Civil War Dred Scott case and its invalidation of crucial pieces of New Deal legislation during the Great Depression.

None of this is to say that lots of thorny abortion-related decisions will continue to face Americans – like federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide a wide range of women’s health care services, including abortion services; and about what kinds of reproductive health services like birth control religious organizations should be required to provide for female employees in their health insurance plans. And few of them have generated enough polling evidence to identify consensus with any justifiable confidence.

But the broadest, most important abortion-related questions have been decided – especially in the court of public opinion. The procedure will remain a strongly protected Constitutional right early in pregnancy, and a more weakly protected right in later phases. Throughout pregnancies, this right will receive virtually absolute protection in genuinely traumatic circumstances, and be subjected by states to curbs on its availability that don’t “substantially” nullify it in practical terms — and that therefore should not be reflexively condemned as stepping stones to wide-ranging bans.

So abortion rights supporters need to give up on extending strong protections deep into pregnancy. And abortion rights opponents should forget about overturning Roe and Casey. It’s true that medical advances that keep pushing fetal survivability (if not viability without pervasive support) back closer to conception will one day resume adding fuel to the abortion debate fire. And public opinion is by no means set in stone. But for more than forty years since Roe, Americans collectively have been saying that the general abortion debate is over, and the courts have plainly agreed. It’s high time that politicians and activists across the spectrum got the message.

Im-Politic: Signs of Hopeless Division or Potential Unity?

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Affordable Care Act, Democrats, election 2020, Gallup, healthcare, Im-Politic, Immigration, independents, Obamacare, Republicans, Trump

Polls like today’s Gallup survey that try to assess what national issues and problems are foremost in American’s minds are terrifically valuable, especially as big elections like the 2020 presidential race approach. Trouble is, Democrats and Republicans and independents of all kinds will struggle to find clear trends marked out in this morning’s survey, much less derive strong comfort from it.

The difficulties start with Gallup’s overall findings about how high various major issues rank on the public’s priority scale. Competing fiercely for the top spot, and mentioned more than twice as often as the next concerns, are “The government/poor leadership” (cited by 23 percent of respondents – in this case, “US adults”) and “Immigration” (cited by 21 percent). And to be more specific, the government/leadership option offered by Gallup included “Congress” and “politicians,” not simply the President. “Immigration” wasn’t further elaborated on.

In principle, some more light might be shed on who could benefit most from this poor government finding by examining the trends over time. But as the chart below shows, although the importance of the overall government issue began rising notably right after the last presidential election (indicating that President Trump is causing most of the anxiety), the ranking became unusually volatile in the middle of last year, and has stayed that way – including through 2019. This year, of course, has seen an unpopular partial federal government shutdown most often blamed on Mr. Trump, rising levels of partisan rancor, and the climax (for now) of the Russia scandals investigation. On the whole, though, it seems reasonable to conclude that this issue is cutting somewhat against the President.

Some evidence to the contrary, however, comes from the current separate figures for Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Democrats express the most concern about the quality of government and leadership, with 32 percent pegging it as the country’s top problem. But although only 21 percent of Republicans chose this option, that result was much closer to that of independents (19 percent) than the Democrats figure. Both independents and especially Republicans are much likelier than the Democrats to blame government failings on the Democrats who now control the House of Representatives, and therefore wield much more power in Washington than during Mr. Trump’s first two years in office.

Using these criteria, the Gallup immigration findings look even more promising for Mr. Trump. It’s true that using that single noun to describe the issue masks the distinction between respondents who consider current U.S. policy too restrictive or not restrictive enough.

But assuming – not too controversially – that Republicans favor more immigration curbs, Democrats fewer, and independents as a group coming down somewhere in the middle, it seems apparent that immigration-motivated Americans are likelier to be Republican and Trump voters. Indeed, only five percent of Democrats view immigration as the country’s biggest problem today, versus 18 percent of independents and 41 percent of Republicans.

As for the rest of the issues mentioned in the Gallup survey, the responses seem to offer hope for both parties. Relatively little concern is expressed about matters such as the economy in general, unemployment and jobs, poverty, and inequality – which looks like good news for Republicans and for the President, since these results clearly signal satisfaction with the so-called pocketbook issues. Ditto for the measly three percent figure recorded for climate change and other environmental issues combined, and the failure of gun violence even to make it into the rankings.

At the same time, Democrats should feel pretty pleased that “Ethics/Moral/Religious/Family decline” alarmed only three percent of respondents, and “Crime/Violence” topped the list for only two percent.

The most puzzling message sent by the Gallup results concerns healthcare – which, it’s widely agreed, helped the Democrats greatly during last year’s midterm elections, and could be a winner for them again in 2020, especially if Mr. Trump continues his war on Obamacare.

The seven percent of the public naming healthcare as the country’s biggest problem resulted in the third highest such score (behind “The government/Poor leadership” and immigration). But especially given its enormous importance for so many families’ finances no matter how the Obamacare fight turns out – and potentially into the future if the White House and both houses of Congress are won by Democrats seeking to expand coverage dramatically – seven percent is hardly astronomical.

But how should this number be interpreted? If it signals overwhelming satisfaction with the status quo, however uncertain its durability is Republicans could benefit – but probably only if they make clear that they won’t go for major change, either. Since Obamacare (officially known as the Affordable Care Act) has shaped the status quo, Democrats in principle could take heart – particularly if their most ambitious ideas on this front fall by the wayside.

And here’s the partisan split (which I don’t think undermines the above analysis): Healthcare is seen as America’s leading problem by three percent of Republicans, seven percent of independents, and 14 percent of Democrats.

This Gallup poll’s findings that so many different and even clashing concerns are troubling Americans these days – and in so many possibly different ways – could understandably be seen as evidence that Americans are hopelessly far from agreeing on national priorities. I prefer a more optimistic take: There’s a new winning consensus and lasting political realignment in the making if only the nation’s political leaders could break out of their ideological straitjackets and build it.

Im-Politic: New Evidence that Trump-Russia is a Voter Nothing-Burger

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2016 elections, 2020 elections, collusion, foreign policy, Gallup, Im-Politic, midterm elections, polls, public opinion, Russia, Trump, Trump-Russia

I know that it’s only one poll, and that poll results can be pretty dodgy. (See “2016 U.S. Presidential Election.”) But the results of a new Gallup survey on Americans’ views towards U.S.-Russia relations seem well worth spotlighting anyway, especially given the continuing unrelenting headlines being generated by the alleged Trump-Russia scandals, by all the evidence of Russian meddling in American politics, and various investigations of the above.

Gallup asked respondents whether it’s “more important to improve relations with Russia” or “more important to take strong diplomatic and economic steps against Russia.” And by a healthy 58 percent to 36 percent margin, the “improve relations” option won out. Just as striking is that a hard line against Moscow is strongly opposed even though 75 percent of the public believes that Russia interfered in the last presidential election, and 39 percent believes that such activities “changed the outcome.”

As predictable these days, these views are sharply divided along partisan lines. But what’s less predictable is that the Democrats come across as the most intense partisans by far. To be sure, their support for a “hard” vs a “soft” line toward Russia wasn’t overwhelming – 51 percent for the former, 45 percent for the latter. But it contrasted sharply not only with the opinion of Republicans (who favored a softer line by a lopsided 74 percent to 22 percent margin). Democrats’ views also differed significantly from those of independents (who favored a softer line by 55 percent to 37 percent).

And this Gallup survey makes it tough to blame supposed public apathy or ignorance for these findings. Specifically, two-thirds of respondents told Gallup they were following news about Russia and the 2016 election “closely” and 33 percent reported following such developments “very closely.” Gallup contends that this level of attention is “slightly above” the norm for their news attentiveness results going back to 1991.

Moreover, Gallup reports that the more closely its sample members followed the story, the likelier they were to believe that Russia interfered and that its interference mattered. Indeed, ninety percent of the true newshounds accepted the meddling claims. But only 51 percent of this highly attentive group believed that the alleged Russian operations changed the outcome. And those respondents who were following such news only somewhat closely split nearly evenly on the matter (with 42 percent agreeing that the meddling affected the outcome and 40 percent disagreeing)

The same pattern was evident when it came to views on Russia relations options. Of those Americans following these stories very closely, a majority favored the harder line. But the margin was only 53 percent to 42 percent. The results for Americans following the Russia coverage only somewhat closely was the reverse – and then some. Only thirty-seven percent backed the hard line while fully 59 percent opposed it.

When combined with other Gallup findings that, through June, the constellation of Trump-Russia issues wasn’t even moving the needle in terms of Americans’ rankings of their top concerns, this new survey indicates that, unless a genuine smoking gun is uncovered, Democrats would be best advised to stress other anti-Trump messages in their campaigns this year to regain control of Congress. For if voters were strongly responsive, wouldn’t they be demanding that their leaders make Russia pay dearly for an attack on their democracy? At the same time, since voter turnout in mid-term elections is typically very low, hammering away at Russia and impeachment etc could possibly bring to the polls more “resistance” true believers and swing some close races.

The implications for the next presidential race – again, barring a smoking fun – seem clearer: In such a generally higher turnout race, voters are likely to be paying much more attention to the standard array of pocketbook and cultural issues (along with foreign policy, if crises break out) than to whatever’s left of the Trump-Russia controversy.

Im-Politic: An Old Year Rung Out with Fake News

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ABC News, Barack Obama, Bloomberg.com, CNN.com, Gallup, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, Marketwatch.com, NBC News, Newsday, Politico.com, The New York Times, Trump, USAToday, Washington Post

Whatever you think of Donald Trump, his presidential campaign, and his first year in office, you can be sure of this: His charges that too much of the Mainstream Media publishes and broadcasts too much fake news will continue – and continue to resonate – as long as their performance in covering a new Gallup survey of the most admired men and women in America keeps typifying their output.

Gallup has asked Americans who they look up to most since the 1940s (for male figures) and since the 1950s (for female figures). As I see it, the 2017 poll’s results were a fascinating mix. They showed that former President Barack Obama and last year’s Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton continued their long strings at the top of their heaps. President Trump came in second on the men’s list – as he has since 2015.

In my view, Gallup played it right in its report on the survey, noting the winners in its lead paragraph and then immediately observing that the Obama and Clinton margins were “much narrower…than in the past.” The firm didn’t highlight that both Democrats’ edge fell at a faster rate than President Trump, but at least its tables made that trend clear.

Few major news organizations followed suit.

USAToday‘s headline, for example, blared, “Barack Obama beats Donald Trump for most admired man, Hillary Clinton tops list again in Gallup poll.” Reporter Ashley May never mentioned their diminishing leads.

CNN.com did better. Its header announced “Gallup: Obama, Hillary Clinton remain most admired” and noted the Obama dip in the second paragraph. But the Clinton fall-off wasn’t reported until the fifth (of ten) paragraphs.

The ABC News headline – “President Trump is America’s second-most admired man, poll finds” – at least accurately reflected the disparaging tone of the full article. “Digital reporter” Karma Allen led off by observing that “President Donald Trump snagged a major legislative victory with the signing of his landmark tax reform bill last week, but he’s still living in his predecessor’s shadow when it comes to public admiration, according to a new poll.”

He continued with the factoid that the results marked “one of the very few times in recent history that an incumbent president hasn’t taken the top spot.” (It’s actually 13 out of 71 times.) And he simply ignored the declining Obama and Clinton numbers.

Bloomberg,com chose as its headline a reasonable “Obama Tops Trump as Most Admired, Gallup Poll of Americans Finds,” but although specifying that the margin was “close,” never mentioned the weakening Obama or Clinton ratings, either. The same held for the article run in Politico.com. The New York Times headline was a similarly accurate “Clinton and Obama Top U.S. Poll on Most Admired People” but the article neglected to include the trend over time as well.

The two worst performances? The Washington Post‘s headline was a gratuitously snarky “Obama beats Trump where it will sting: He’s the most admired man in America.” A graphic made clear the closing Trump-Obama gap, but this development never made it into the article itself. However reporter Philip Bump did consider it important to write that the overall results “coming at this moment, will probably be somewhat galling to Trump.”

Whoever wrote the headlines for the coverage by Long Island’s Newsday seemed like he or she was auditioning for a job at the higher profile Post. “Gallup ‘most admired’ poll is an ‘Obamanation’ for Trump,” was the first description of the survey the paper’s readers saw. The second description, in a subhead? “He just can’t win the popular vote.” The article itself, by William Goldschlag, simply continued in this vein.

But I’d be just as remiss as much of the Mainstream Media by failing to mention journalists who recognized the deteriorating relative Obama and Clinton ratings. So Rachel Koning Beals of Marketwatch.com and Phil Helsel of NBC News, please take richly deserved bows. Let’s all hope your news judgment spreads to many more of your colleagues in the New Year!

Im-Politic: Beyond the (Poll) Numbers on Immigration

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culture, Democrats, economy, Gallup, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Jobs, polls, Republicans, taxes, Trump, wages

Do apparently clashing poll results on immigration mainly signal that polling companies don’t know what they’re doing? That Americans are fundamentally conflicted on the issue? Or can sensible, and even obvious, reasons be identified for the seeming gap if you just do a little extra thinking? Examining three recent Gallup soundings convinces me that it’s the latter.

On the proverbial one hand, two new Gallup surveys about immigration appear to show that Americans have become much keener on immigrants – possibly including illegal immigrants, though Gallup hasn’t drawn this distinction. On June 29, Gallup reported that a record (post-1993) share of Americans (49 percent) now agree that “immigrants mostly help the U.S. economy by providing low cost labor.” Moreover, except for a drop in the very late 1990s and early 2000s, this number has been rising – though since 2005, the increase has been gradual.

Forty percent of respondents agreed that immigrants “most hurt the economy by driving wages down for many Americans.” In contrast to the trends for those expressing favorable opinions, the share of Americans worried about immigrants’ wage-related economic impact has decreased pretty sharply since 1993 (when it stood at 64 percent), and especially since the early 2000s (when it peaked at 65 percent).

Also encouraging for proponents of more immigration or more lenient policies towards illegal immigrants: a poll the day before showing that the percentages of Americans viewing immigrants as a plus rather than a negative for the country on economic and non-economic grounds had grown impressively between 2007 and 2017. Interestingly, though, even in 2017, the only category in which a majority of Americans emphasized the positive impact of immigration was in “food, music and the arts” (57 percent – up from 40 percent in 2007). Only ten percent of Americans said that immigration had worsened matters on these scores.

On “the economy in general,” only 45 percent in 2017 saw immigrants “making the situation in the country better” (up from 28 percent in 2007). And only 23 percent and 20 percent believed that immigrants had improved the national situation when it comes to “taxes” and “job opportunities for you and your family” – up from 19 and 11 percent, respectively, in 2007.

As for those who believed immigrants’ effects were negative, 30 percent agreed with that proposition regarding the overall economy, 41 percent went along on the subject of taxes, and 28 percent expressed this view on the job issue. (The remainder of respondents stated that immigrants weren’t having much effect in any of these areas.)

As Gallup noted, positive answers to these questions in 2017 were generally at their highest levels since the firm began asking them in 2001. And despite the high negative numbers, a strong argument can be made that the considerable indifference expressed can be seen as an endorsement of immigrants’ growing numbers overall, given the emotional resonance of the issue.

Yet a June 7 Gallup survey created a substantially different picture. It reports that the shares of Americans believing that immigration “should be decreased” has kept falling since the mid-1990s (from 65 percent to 35 percent). But it was still bigger than the growing share believing that immigration “should be increased” – which has risen from the high single digits from the mid-1960s to 24 percent nowadays. Thirty five percent of Americans want “immigration to be kept at its present level,” and this number has stayed pretty stable – with some fluctuations – since the mid-1960s.

And here’s a surprise: Over the past year, the share of Democrats and Democratic leaners who favor decreasing immigration has actually risen slightly (from 20 to 23 percent) while that of Republicans and Republican leaners has shrunk from 60 percent to 48 percent. It’s true that the share of Democrats and leaners favoring greater immigration levels rose slightly as well. But it still stands at only 33 percent. (The rest expressed satisfaction with current levels.)

In this survey, Gallup analysts ventured an explanation for the unusual finding for Republicans; the GOP shift:

“could reflect a sense of political victory among Trump supporters who believe the president is fulfilling the immigration-related promises he made on the campaign trail. Republicans could, thus, feel more satisfied with the current status of immigration than they did during the height of the presidential election. Also, some Trump supporters might believe immigrants are being more thoroughly vetted by the Trump administration.”

I wish that Gallup had been as analytically ambitious in interpreting at least some of the growing popularity of the immigrant population according to the many indicators. One explanation that seems pretty obvious to me: It’s been influenced pretty considerably by the phenomenal growth of the country’s immigrant population. Indeed, since 1960, it’s more than quadrupled in absolute terms (to an estimated 41.3 million as of 2013). And from 1970 to 2013, immigrants increased their share of the American population from 4.7 percent to 13.1 percent. So more of the respondents being reached by Gallup are immigrants themselves, or their children.

It’s true that throughout American history, immigrants have shown a striking tendency to oppose more immigration once they’ve become established in their new homeland – usually for fear of facing new economic competition. But one of the most important and distinctive aspects of American immigration policy in recent decades has surely undercut this form of nativism – the focus on family reunification. That is, it’s likely that many recent immigrants favor more immigration because they view it mainly as a chance to bring in not additional low-wage workers, but close relatives. At the same time, we’ve got statistics strongly indicating that Hispanics’ views on immigration don’t necessarily dovetail with this observation.

So it seems that the most useful bottom line is that polls continue to be important sources of information about major political, social, economic, and other trends, but that to gauge public opinion accurately, you need to keep looking beyond the raw numbers.

Im-Politic: A Moral Quandary Surrounding American Morals?

Tags

abortion, Gallup, gay marriage, Im-Politic, marijuana, moderates, morals, polling, public opinion, social conservatives, social liberals, Trump, values

This’ll be one of those posts where I confess I just don’t know what the heck is going on. But the info seems so compelling – and possibly contradictory – that it can’t be ignored.

The first half of the puzzle comes from Gallup’s new finding that a large (81 percent) of Americans judge the country’s moral values to be “only fair” or “poor,” and that 77 percent believe that this problem is getting worse. Although I know there will be many who are tempted to respond with something to the effect of “Ah, Trump,” keep in mind that these numbers haven’t changed dramatically since the company began asking such questions in 2002. (Somewhat greater shifts – for the worse – are evident since the early 1990s, when Gallup’s questions were somewhat differently worded.)

Another intriguing result: More than a third of respondents rated the state of U.S. morality as “fair” – which isn’t necessarily negative. In fact, combining the 36 percent of Americans taking this view with the (dwindling) share who view it as “excellent/good” (17 percent) sums to a majority that’s arguably pleased with the nation’s ethics. And these sub-categories (called “internals” by polling insiders) have remained broadly stable over the last decade and a half as well.

Less intriguing: Over the last year, self-identified social liberals have become much more concerned about America’s morals, with the share perceiving a worsening spurting from 58 percent to 71 percent. Social moderates became markedly more pessimistic, too, and that definitely looks like a Trump effect. So does the less dramatic drop in the share of those considering themselves as social conservatives telling Gallup that moral decay intensified during that time.

But here’s where the real mystery comes in. Another Gallup survey, taken just a few weeks ago, reported “Americans Hold Record Liberal Views on Most Moral Issues”. Give the company credit: It’s recognized the apparent paradox: “Even liberals, who seemingly should be pleased with the growing number of Americans who agree with their point of view on the morality of prominent social issues, are more likely to say things are getting worse than getting better.”

Gallup offers two possible explanations, but I don’t find them especially convincing. The first, after all, assumes (at least logically) that social liberals believe that many Americans who have swung their way on gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, and the like are still insensitive (at best) toward racism and poverty. Or even have become more so. The second assumes that liberals believe that these same, increasingly tolerant Americans keep displaying “lack of respect or tolerance for others,” or are getting even coarser.

Nor am I persuaded by another possible explanation that could well be proposed by social conservatives: that although they increasingly support more liberal moral positions and views, deep down inside, liberals and moderates recognize them as dangerous and therefore perceive American morals to be declining.

So I’m left in the dark, but certain something important is taking place within the national psyche. What do all of you think?

Im-Politic: Americans are Far from Bitterly Divided on Everything

Tags

Affordable Care Act, border wall, climate change, criminal illegal immigrants, Democrats, deportations, Gallup, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, infrastructure, Mexico, Obamacare, polls, regulations, Republicans, tariffs, taxes, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, United Nations

America today is deeply divided on the new Trump presidency and many substantive issues. But the message sent by a new Gallup poll is that there’s considerable consensus when it comes to identifying the nation’s major challenges. And although polls have recently gotten a deserved black eye over their election performance, this fundamental finding tracks intriguingly with that reported (by a different organization) that I wrote about a little over a year ago.

Gallup sought Americans’ views on which of President Trump’s campaign promises they believe that it’s “very important” for him to keep. Here are the top four – which were also the only choices that topped 50 percent:

>”Enact a major spending program to strengthen infrastructure” 69 percent

>”Reduce income taxes for all Americans” 54 percent

>”Establish tariffs on foreign imports” 51 percent

>”Deport the more than 2 million illegal immigrants who have

    committed crimes” 51 percent

At least as interesting, three of these four stated Trump priorities enjoy strong bipartisan support:

>infrastructure: 68 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of Republicans

>tax cuts: 46 percent of Democrats, 62 percent of Republicans

>tariffs: 45 percent of Democrats, 62 percent of Republicans

The exception – interestingly – is

>deport criminal illegal immigrants: 33 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of         Republicans

Now here are the Trump priorities that Gallup found Americans regard as least important (note – which does mean that they oppose them):

>”Cancel billions in payments to UN climate change program” 30 percent

>”Withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership” 26 percent

>”Build a wall along the border with Mexico” 26 percent

>”Require that for each new federal regulation, two must be

    eliminated” 23 percent

Just FYI, the administration has already announced officially that it’s pulling out of the Pacific trade deal.

And guess what? There’s a great deal of bipartisan consensus on the relative unimportance of these matters, too:

>UN climate change payments: 23 percent of Democrats, 38 percent of Republicans

>Trans-Pacific Partnership: 19 percent of Democrats, 32 percent of Republicans

>border wall: 12 percent of Democrats, 38 percent of Republicans

>regulations: 14 percent of Democrats, 31 percent of Republicans

Finally, I couldn’t help but notice that the most divisive Trump priorities, according to Gallup, are the aforementioned deportations of criminal illegal immigrants and…repealing Obamacare. A total of 46 percent of Americans told Gallup this move was “very important,” but although 68 percent of Republicans were on board with scrapping the Affordable Care Act quickly, only 26 percent of Democrats agreed.

I know that the president has his own pollsters – and of course his own opinions. But I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if their list of top White House priorities didn’t wasn’t very similar to those identified by Gallup as the public’s. Nor would I be surprised if achieving these goals – and softpedaling many of the others – made for a great first 100 days.

Im-Politic: Polls Apart

Tags

2016 elections, economy, Gallup, Im-Politic, Jobs, national security, polls, terrorism

Since it’s a presidential election year, we’ve heard even more than usual about polls, and their dominance of the political news will only increase through the upcoming election. If only there was any reason to believe that all this polling will make us much better informed about the choices we face, or even about our views of these choices. Certainly, it’s tough to justify much optimism after looking at the Gallup organization’s work yesterday.

In one survey, Gallup asked Americans whether they are “satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time.” Just 29 percent of respondents expressed satisfaction, which, as Gallup observed continued “the trend of low satisfaction levels since 2007.” Since Gallup began asking this question, in 1979, the average “satisfaction level” has been 37 percent.

It’s easy to take this result and conclude that it cuts in favor of Republican political candidates this year, since Democrats hold the White House, since presidents usually take most of the blame or credit for the state of the union, and since this kind of question is seen as a key determinant of how successful the president’s party is likely to be. Also of note – during the satisfaction Obama years, the satisfaction level has averaged only 24 percent. So that’s another reason to suppose that voters are hankering for a change.

But on the very same day, Gallup released a survey pointing to exactly the opposite type of conclusions. The company asked respondents whether they think that now is a “good time or a bad time to find a quality job.” Those optimistic about the job market came to 43 percent of respondents – a level so high that it’s only slightly below the record of 48 percent, registered in 2007, just before the recession struck. (This data series began in 2001.) And when President Obama was first elected, in 2008, this reading was in the 20s.

It’s of course possible that Americans aren’t thinking of job-related issues when they rate the current state of national affairs. Maybe they have many other, more important matters on their minds? Yet other Gallup research casts major doubt on this possibility. It has consistently found that huge majorities of Americans in both parties – in the high 80s and 90s percent, view “the economy and jobs” as “extremely or very important to their vote for president.” That looks awfully promising for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and awfully gloomy for her likely rival, Republican Donald Trump.

To be fair, “terrorism and national security” are also seen as major keys to presidential voting by the electorate according to Gallup, and climate change and race relations (mainly among Democrats) rank as major concerns as well. But the latter two in particular register well below the economic issues.

Maybe next week, the polling concern will come out with results that resolve the apparent disconnect between the public’s views of the economy and its views of the nation’s course in general. Until it does, however, I’ll be vacillating back and forth over whether I should be pitying the politicians who need somehow to make sense of these contradictions, or simply swearing off polls altogether.

Im-Politic: What American Muslims Think of American Political Parties

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2016 elections, American Muslims, Democrats, demographics, Donald Trump, Electoral College, Gallup, George W. Bush, Im-Politic, Muslim ban, Muslims, polls, Republicans, September 11, The Atlantic

I hate to keep reporting on polls here at RealityChek because, as I keep noting, gauging public opinion sometimes doesn’t seem much more scientific than alchemy. But sometimes the results are so darned interesting – and focus on such neglected subjects – that they demand spotlighting.

So kudos to the Gallup organization for shedding light on a question that’s the mirror image of something that surveys have been obsessing about recently. Rather than (yet again), asking what Americans of different parties think of Islam and the nation’s Muslim population, Gallup asked American Muslims what they think of the two major political parties. Thanks to recent headlines, the results aren’t surprising.  But their ultimate political importance may be much less obvious.

Just as most polls have detected more concern about American Muslims and their religion in Republican than Democratic ranks – along with more Republican support for measures like Donald Trump-like bans or restrictions on Muslim travel to the United States – Gallup’s latest shows that American Muslims are the religious group most enthusiastic about the Democrats.

According to Gallup, fully two-thirds of American Muslims “identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.” American Jews are the only other significant religious group that comes close, at 60 percent. The figures for Catholics and Protestants, respectively, are 43 percent and 39 percent.

In addition, “Muslim Americans have the lowest percentage of any religious group who identify as or lean Republican.” And here the gap is even wider. This figure of 16 percent is much lower than that of the next least Republican identifiers – Jews, at 31 percent. Forty one percent of Catholics and 48 percent of Protestants identify with or lean Republican.

There’s of course a strong temptation to conclude that Republicans’ unpopularity with Muslims is all Trump’s fault. But this interesting recent Atlantic piece makes clear that the GOP’s standing with America’s Muslims has been weakening steadily since George W. Bush’s initial election as president in 2000. Moreover, it provides evidence that this decline began during Bush’s presidency, despite his high profile efforts to encourage toleration towards Muslims throughout the entire post September 11 period.

Perhaps most intriguing of all, election results presented in this article indicate that Muslim views of Republicans have actually improved somewhat since the mid-2000s, and that this trend has continued in the Obama years.

Will today’s Republican campaign drive even more Muslim voters into the Democratic camp? And how much will this matter, given the importance of individual states in the U.S. presidential election system and how the geographic distribution of the (voting age) Muslim population compares with various electoral college strategies all presidential candidates are developing right now? I sure don’t have any answers at this point. (Just FYI, here’s one U.S. government state- and county-level breakdown on where the nation’s Muslims live.)

What does seem clear is that what you hear about Islam and Muslims and related policy questions from the two major parties and their candidates will of course reflect genuine convictions about national security and public fears. But it will also reflect technical political calculations stemming from Gallup-like polls and Electoral College-related demographics.